Written by Richard D. Kocur |
Monday, October 17, 2022
Disney faced pressure from gender equity activists and employees for not doing enough to oppose the bill. Then, after coming out in opposition, Disney faced blowback from parents who believed the company should simply focus on providing family entertainment. On that issue, Disney management spun around more than a rider on the theme park’s iconic Teacup ride. And why? Because of ill-conceived social activism on an issue that was irrelevant to the primary role of the business. Now Blackrock finds itself in a comparable position as a result of a similar activist pursuit.

With the stock market down nearly 20% year-to-date in 2022, investors are paying close attention to the financial performance of their portfolios: seeking to protect 401Ks, looking for safe havens, and trusting that their fiduciary asset managers are making the right decisions with ever-shrinking nest eggs. The last thing any investor would want now is for asset managers to be investing in companies for any reason other than to maximize financial return.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what the world’s largest asset manager, Blackrock Inc., is doing through an emphasis on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing. This mode of corporate social activism has placed Blackrock in a difficult position, however, as pressure from both sides of the ESG issue close in on the company. Blackrock has become the latest example of a company experiencing the consequences of corporate social activism.
The movement to emphasize ESG within corporate structures and as corporate objectives first emerged in the early 2000s. ESG-focused investing directs capital to companies with stated goals on issues like climate change and social justice. Financial returns are a secondary concern to those who want to support or pressure companies to commit to ESG standards and enact policies to reach those standards.
With approximately $10 trillion in assets under management, Blackrock wields substantial power over where their assets, and by extension the assets of anyone invested in Blackrock, are placed. An August 16 editorial in the Wall Street Journal noted how Blackrock pressured companies to “avoid investing in fossil-fuel assets … and reduce emissions to achieve net zero by 2050.” In essence, putting pressure on the companies in which Blackrock invests to adopt ESG standards. If Blackrock’s blackmail is resisted, proxy shares are voted against management. This approach puts activism above shareholders’ returns. But Blackrock is beginning to see a backlash.
In late summer 2022, attorneys general from 19 Republican states sent a letter to Blackrock CEO Larry Fink seeking answers about potential conflicts between the firm’s ESG investing practices and his company’s fiduciary duty. In addition, states such as Texas and Louisiana have begun to bar state investment in any Blackrock fund that pushes ESG standards. With billions in state pension dollars and the investments of individual citizens at stake, the AGs and state comptrollers are calling Blackrock on the carpet.
In addition to this political reaction, market forces have also stepped into the ESG fight. A new investment alternative to ESG funds was recently launched by Strive Asset Management. Strive created a fund that mirrors Blackrock’s U.S. Energy Index Fund (IYE) but with a commitment to pursue non-ESG policies.
If pressure from those in opposition to ESG was not enough, Blackrock is also facing pushback from ESG advocates. In late September 2022, officials responsible for the public pension funds in New York City sent a letter to Fink pressing Blackrock to recommit to achieving net-zero emissions across its investment portfolio and to vote more in line with climate-related shareholder initiatives. Blackrock manages approximately $43 billion in investments for three New York City pension funds, according to a September 2022 article in the Wall Street Journal.
Blackrock could take a lesson from the investment adage, “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” In the case of corporate social activism, past performance is a guarantee of future results. One only needs to look back to the mess in which the Walt Disney Corporation found itself because of its stance on Florida’s Parental Rights bill.
First, Disney faced pressure from gender equity activists and employees for not doing enough to oppose the bill. Then, after coming out in opposition, Disney faced blowback from parents who believed the company should simply focus on providing family entertainment. On that issue, Disney management spun around more than a rider on the theme park’s iconic Teacup ride. And why? Because of ill-conceived social activism on an issue that was irrelevant to the primary role of the business. Now Blackrock finds itself in a comparable position as a result of a similar activist pursuit.
Pressured from both sides of the ESG issue, they have now put themselves between a Blackrock and a hard place.
The author thanks Alex Heisey for his help in gathering research for this article.
Dr. Richard D. Kocur is an assistant professor of business at Grove City College. This article is used with permission.
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Obergefell was supposed to tame homosexuality, but it has precip­itated a regime of more radical queerness. From “Marriage is a human right” to “Marriage is deeply flawed and fundamentally violent”: The sexual left’s long-running dispute about the nature of marriage and its relation to gayness seems to be getting resolved in the direction of the marriage skeptics.

In November 2022, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice came out against gay marriage. “I find it disappointing how much time and resources went into fighting for inclusion in the deeply flawed and fundamentally violent institution of civil marriage,” Chase Strangio wrote on Instagram. Two months later, Taylor Silverman, a female skateboarder who gained prominence after objecting to the inclusion of biological males in women’s athletic competitions, criticized gay marriage from the opposite direction: “I used to think gay marriage was ok until all of the things that conservatives warned us would happen next actually happened. Now it seems it really was the beginning of the dangerous slippery slope.” With the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, the legal status of same-sex marriage has never been more secure. Public opinion is strongly in its favor, even as, not so long ago, it was overwhelmingly opposed. Yet the ideological case for same-sex marriage seems strangely fragile, subject to challenge on both the left and the right.
It has been eight years since the White House was lit with rainbow colors in celebration of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Hailed as the enshrinement of a new consensus, the national recognition of same-sex marriage can also be understood as an event that accelerated polarization—leading some on the left to press for ever more changes, and some on the right to doubt the very possibility of liberal governance.
Not all of the effects of gay marriage are obvious, or were anticipated. In the runup to the national recognition of gay marriage, much attention was paid on both sides to such questions as whether children raised in same-sex households could thrive as did those raised by a mother and father. Important as they were, these discussions distracted from another way in which gay marriage would affect national life. Its recognition changed the makeup of the American elite by causing more conservative and religious actors to lose standing while left-wing activists gained power and prestige. For thoroughgoing progressives, there is nothing to lament in these developments. But for figures on the center-left, gay marriage has had an ambiguous legacy.
Gay marriage was the first great triumph of cancel culture. Sasha Issenberg, a historian of gay marriage, has observed that by deploying the novel weapons of “shaming and shunning,” activists “changed the economic terrain on which cultural conflict was waged.” One of the early breakthroughs occurred when eightmaps.com appeared online. The site used information gathered under financial disclosure laws to list the names and locations of people who had donated to California’s Proposition 8, a referendum that stated marriage could take place only between a man and a woman. Suddenly American citizens came under pressure for their political views—not just from their friends and families, but potentially from anyone with an internet connection. Some reported receiving envelopes with powder and death threats.
Donors to Proposition 8 were ­also targeted through their employers. Scott Eckern, the artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, was forced to resign after his colleagues learned that he had backed the referendum. ­Brendan Eich was forced to step down as the CEO of Mozilla in 2014, when his past support of Proposition 8 was publicized.
Those who denounce cancel culture often speak as though it was hatched by radical activists and intolerant students, and see the contest as pitting liberal tolerance against illiberal denunciation. But as the history of gay marriage shows, the reality is more complicated. Cancel culture was pioneered in part by veteran political activists such as the lifelong Republican Fred Karger, who organized demonstrations outside commercial properties owned by backers of Proposition 8. And it arose in alliance with corporate power, as seen when corporations declared “capital strikes” by threatening to pull out of states that guaranteed religious freedom to those who rejected gay marriage.
In recent years, figures such as ­Andrew Sullivan have emerged as brave and eloquent critics of wokeness. They have opposed its particular injustices while exploring its deep origins. They have tied wokeness to the flowering of “illiberalism” on the left and the right. But they have failed to examine how these forms of illiberalism were encouraged by the campaign for a policy they support.
Gay marriage changed the character of important institutions in ways that its moderate supporters have not yet recognized. Through the operation of cancel culture, high-profile opponents of same-sex marriage were silenced, fired, or forced out of important institutions. In 2011, Paul Clement, the distinguished appellate lawyer and former solicitor general, was compelled to leave his law firm in order to continue his legal work on behalf of the Defense of Marriage Act, a case that his firm had been pressured to drop by the Human Rights Campaign. In 2015, Kelvin Cochran, the chief of the Atlanta fire department, was fired after writing a book that expressed opposition to homosexuality. In 2023, Jacob Kersey, a police officer in Georgia, was placed on leave after writing on Facebook: “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.”
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The covenant of works was a completely generous arrangement. But our first parents violated that covenant (cf. Heb. 8:9). Having broken it they could not regain life through the principle of works. And God was in no way bound to offer another arrangement for salvation. But he did. The covenant of grace is an entirely different agreement. It is still based on works, but not on the works of creatures.

Every relationship needs definition. Without clear terms we are unsure how to interact with each other. Marriage is a good example of how definitions aid relationships. Upon marriage an otherwise unrelated man and a woman become united by covenant. In the presence of witnesses each partner promises to fulfil responsibilities. Signed records formalize the covenant.
So it is with God’s relationship to people. Imagine if God had created humans but never introduced himself or articulated what he expected of them or what they could expect of him. Our debt of obedience and the penalty for non-compliance would still have existed but we wouldn’t have known it. And how could we enjoy God ignorant of how the sovereign Creator would treat us from one moment to the next? From the beginning God has defined his relationship with his people through covenants.
The Covenant of Works (5.1, 2)
Scripture doesn’t explicitly identify a pre-fall covenant of works. And we don’t need to commit to that name; the assembly also called it a “covenant of life.”[i] But Scripture does give us reasons to hold to a pre-fall covenant. First, the initial relationship between God and Adam has all the marks of a covenant, or a binding agreement. It has contracting parties, promises, conditions, penalties and, in the tree of life, a sacrament.[ii] Second, the New Testament explicitly contrasts the actions of Adam and Christ as covenant mediators. Here’s how Paul put it: “For if, by one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17; cf. 1 Cor. 15:44–49).
In the first covenant Adam did not need grace, which we might define as unmerited salvation. Instead the covenant was based on a law principle: “the person who does the commandments shall live by them” (Rom. 10:5; cf. Gal. 3:12; Lev. 18:5). In Genesis one and two God stipulated positive and negative commands. The King required Adam to steward his world, “to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15; cf. 2:5). He spelled out the positive command like this: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over …every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). God provided freedom in this first covenant, for example, in the naming of the animals (Gen. 2:19). His people weren’t slaves. And God enforced only one restriction: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (2:17).
For his part God provided everything his people would need to thrive. They shared his image so they possessed the competencies required for their task. God also provided food to eat (1:29–30). He made not one person but two so that the man and woman might “have a good reward for their labor” (Eccl. 4:9 NKJ).
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